June 2017 - 13 September 2022 index-hebrew
Summary
There is not enough evidence to say what a qᵉśitah was exactly, though passages point to it being a unit of economic value.
Biblical mentions
And [Jacob] bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent, from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for one hundred qesitah. — Genesis 33:19
And the bones of Joseph, which the Israelites brought out from Egypt, were buried in Shechem, on the parcel of ground which Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for one hundred qesitah. It became an inherited possession of Joseph’s descendants. — Joshua 24:32
Then all [Job]’s brothers, all his sisters, and all who had known him before came and ate bread with him in his house. They sympathized with him and comforted him over all the catastrophe which Yahweh had brought upon him. Each of them gave him one qesitah, and each of them one golden ring. — Job 42:11
Discussion
So what is a qeśitah? From its three appearances, it would seem to be currency of some kind. Biblically, the main currency was silver. If the qesitah were a unit of silver, this would make good sense of why it appears alongside a gold _nezem-_ring as a gift in Job 42:11 (see the other passages about _nezem-_rings, where in some cases they have a quasi-currency status).
Can we go about estimating the value of a qesitah from these passages, perhaps in terms of shekels? I see three ways, all flimsy.
For one, we could take the ancient traditional idea that a qesitah was a lamb, and perhaps treat it as a monetary unit approximately equal in value to a lamb. This just pushes the problem back one stage, because we don’t know what a lamb was worth in biblical economics. I’ve seen a figure of two shekels for a sheep “sixth to fourth century BCE Babylonian.” So maybe we could go out on a limb, and if we assume that the lamb tradition has it right, and if we assume that a lamb is worth 50-100% of the price of a sheep, and if we assume that the biblical passages in question refer to an economic system roughly equivalent to Babylonia’s . . . then if we assume all those things a qesitah is worth one or two shekels. But we cannot assume all those things. Even if we do, there’s still the problem of what a shekel is really worth. I’ve got a post on that question here.
A second flimsy approach would be to assume, just for the heck of it, that in the Job passage, the qesitah and nezem are of approximately equal value. Is this justifiable? No. But then how much is the nezem worth? Let’s stick our necks out and say that the _nezem-_rings of Job are identical in weight to the one in Genesis 24:22 — a half a shekel. This is likewise unjustifiable, but let’s do it anyhow. Finally, let’s assume an exchange rate of gold to silver of 14:1 — roughly justifiable — and a qesitah is worth seven silver shekels. (By the way, when I say “shekel” without being more specific, that always means the silver shekel.)
A third approach is recommended by no less an authority than Gesenius, but I still don’t buy it. Take the value of the field (later to become a gravesite) purchased by Jacob from the sons of Hamor (100 qesitah) and set it equal to the value of the field and gravesite purchased by Abraham from the sons of Heth (400 shekels). Presto — a qesitah is worth four shekels.
But why should we assume that two different plots of land are purchased for the same amount? After all, the Bible records plots of land sold from prices as low as 17 shekels of silver (Jeremiah 32:9) to as high as 600 shekels of gold (1 Chronicles 21:25). There is no principle of hermeneutics that says you can pick two fields and assume they cost the same amount.
Or is there? I imagine that a counter-argument might be made on documentary-hypothetical grounds. Remember how three wife-sister narratives are often considered variants of a single original story? Well, I imagine that someone could argue that these two stories, both of which involve a patriarch buying a field from the indigenous “sons of X” to be used as a gravesite in the future for a specified price, are actually but two variants of the same story. For the sake of argument, let’s grant that these are two variants of the same story.
We still can’t say that two variants of the same story would give the same price. After all, the story of the purchase of Ornan’s threshing-floor exists in two variants, and the prices quoted in the two versions could not be more different: 50 shekels silver (2 Samuel 24:24) verses 600 shekels gold (1 Chronicles 21:24-25). So even granting that two stories are variants of the same land-purchase tale, there is no reason to believe that the variants will have the same price.
After all, the gravesite purchase narratives vary in the name of the purchaser (Abraham, Jacob), the name of the sellers / witnesses (Elon and the sons of Heth, the sons of Hamor), the storytelling of the passage, the city in which the purchase takes place (Hebron, Shechem), and who was buried there (Abraham and Sarah, Joseph). With all those variances, and with different monetary units, why should we assume the final monetary amount is the same?
Conclusion
Nobody knows what a qesitah was. There’s just not enough good evidence.